


with such a hell in your heart

by cathly



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Bittersweet, Character Study, F/M, Growing Old, Introspection, M/M, Multi, Nostalgia, Post-Canon, the author is two years late to the party as per usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 12:02:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13410861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathly/pseuds/cathly
Summary: The ocean he knows is a vicious creature, hungry for flesh and blood, its storms a battlefield and its depths a graveyard. It’s an abyss, ever-empty, claiming bodies and ships alike, never quite satisfied. It has no allies and no conquerors, no owner and no king.*It’s this ocean he seeks as he leaves the house every morning and walks east.





	with such a hell in your heart

*

 

"With such a hell in your heart and your head, how can you live?

How can you love?"

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

 

*

 

It’s bitter, the salt in his mouth, while the skyline catches fire.

 

*

 

He doesn’t recognize the ocean here. It’s too calm, too steady, washing over the shores with a gentle hand, turning the sands into molten gold. It caresses his feet, soothes old blisters, smooths out scars. It sighs and whispers, hums a quiet melody that never changes and never ends. It’s calm and contained, its gentle waves glimmering in the sunlight and parting for every obstacle in their way, never daring to climb up the shore.

He wonders, sometimes, if this is how Miranda saw the ocean — if she looked at it as she looked at the golden fields behind their house, thin blades of corn swaying in the wind, familiar and unchanging. He wonders if she saw nothing but a reflection of the sky, ships sailing across its surface like clouds.

Perhaps she didn’t look at the ocean at all. Perhaps it was enough to look at him — to see the way it carved new lines into his skin, chapped his lips and sharpened his tongue. Perhaps it was enough to see its reflection in his eyes and to hear its echo in the hollow of his chest to know all there is to know about the ocean’s cruelty.

The ocean he knows is unforgiving, both in its anger and in its silence. It pushes back when pushed and presses back against pressure, and it never, ever yields. He dreams about it often, about the relentless war between the ocean and his own mind, about the pull of the currents and the howl of the winds, about the roar of the waves against the bow of the ship and the growl of the sails tugging at the ropes. He dreams of the salt burning on his tongue and in his eyes, of water filling the decks and clogging his lungs, pulling him down, down, down. He dreams of the ocean swallowing him whole.

It’s this ocean he seeks as he leaves the house every morning and walks east.

It’s a long walk, longer with every passing year, down the pebbled road and by the orange trees, through the silent fields and down the golden shore, but the pull never lessens, tugging him towards the radiant line in the horizon, towards its promise and its threat.

He always reaches the sands just as the sun is beginning to rise above the water, painting the sky red and gold, first glimpses of sunlight skittering across the waves and racing towards the shore, chasing away the night. He watches the light grow brighter, as if the line of the horizon is about to catch fire, and he tastes the salt on the tip of his tongue.

There is a grave in the ocean that bears his name.

 

*

 

“I’ve found him,” Silver says.

He wields this one sentence like a weapon, far more deadly than the gun in his hand or the blade at his side. The forest is quiet around them, ravens and crows holding their breaths, and James can hear the rush of his blood and the staccato of his heartbeat.

“Him?” he repeats, even though he _knows_ , the knowledge carved into his bones, causing his hands to tremble. He knows because there is only one person whose absence has always felt so much like a presence between them. He knows because this war has a name, has a beginning and now also has an end.

He knows and suddenly he is a puppet with two sets of tangled strings.

“Thomas,” Silver says. “Of course.”

_Of course_.

“You expect me to trust you,” James says, disbelieving. “You expect me to go with you.”

Silver is no longer holding a gun and he is no longer holding James’ gaze.

“I would lie to you about a great many things,” he says, as if his betrayal isn’t still festering in James’ stomach and rising to his throat like a wave of nausea, “but not about this.”

 “Why not?” James asks, cruel and unkind. The ocean is roaring in his ears and rushing through his heart, causing old wounds to burn, burn, burn.

“You know why,” Silver replies. “Surely by now you must know why.”

 

*

 

He pulls off his boots before reaching the sands, careful to keep them clean. He could afford a new pair, should he need one, but these days he prefers his clothes comfortable and worn, familiar with his skin and gentle with his scars. Perhaps this is why he still comes here; the sand is familiar as well. It yields beneath his feet, cool and coarse, still moist from the high tide, pulling him towards the sea, eager to bury him whole.

When he was a child, his mother would walk with him to see his grandfather take out the fishing boat. Her voice would be warm and her smile would be kind, and though her hands would always tremble, James would barely notice the northern wind nibbling at his cheeks as he held onto her gown and hummed along to her songs. Sometimes there would be shells on the shore, spat out by the storm, and he would always bring one home, waiting for the quiet of the night to listen to the ocean trapped inside. He remembers it still — the gentle whisper lulling him to sleep, hushing the hunger gnawing at his belly, cooling down the fever biting at his throat.

He barely remembers the ocean itself, just the joy at the sight of his grandfather and the stories he used to tell as they prepared the fishing nets, the stories of daring captains and treacherous pirates, of adventures and discoveries, of an ocean reflected in the sky.

There is only one fisherman living in the village, but he rarely sails out anymore, his boat buried in the sands. James brings him food, sometimes, and watches him chatter with the empty space by his side, where his wife once stood. He watches his trembling hands and his kind smile and before he leaves, he always seals the window shutters to keep out the northern wind. Thomas never says anything when James doesn’t bring home any gold and he always lets James pick the best of their cheese and fruit, no matter how scarce the money is. He never says anything and he never asks, but he lets James talk, in the darkest hours before the dawn, when the words hurt a little less as they climb up his throat.

The quiet between them is filled with everything Miranda will never say, every silence stretching too long, every pause unfilled. There is no replacing her words. In their hands, they have all the knowledge they need, the knowledge of both the _before_ and the _after,_ the knowledge of the beginning and the ending, but the puzzles never fit quite right, never turn into something whole. Perhaps they will never get it right. Perhaps they haven’t listened enough, perhaps they haven’t paid attention when it mattered, perhaps they allowed too many details to slip through their fingers and out of their minds.

Perhaps they didn’t know her at all.

_I miss you_ , James thinks, and it’s easier now, after all these years. It’s easier now that she isn’t just a symbol he had to use to rally his crew, it’s easier now that he’s with someone who misses her as well. It’s easier to think about her, about who she truly was, rather than who she was supposed to be, about the care she put into building a home for them, a home for him, a place where he could store the last of his gentleness alongside her fragile Meissen porcelain. Before she was anything else — a wife of the man he loved, a woman who followed him across the ocean and down into hell, the better part of his own soul — before all of that, she was his _friend_.

Perhaps the only friend he has ever had.

He walks all the way to the edge of the ocean and lets it wash over his feet. It remains distant and foreign even as he reaches out to grasp it in his hands.

 

*

 

“Is this how it ends, then?” James asks, looking up at the stars, his hands folded on his chest.

Perhaps Silver has pulled the trigger, after all. Perhaps all of this is happening _after_ , a lullaby written for him by his own mind, finally putting him to sleep. Perhaps the bitter taste in the back of his throat is nothing but his own damn blood.

Their camp is quiet, quiet enough that James can hear Silver’s breathing, restless and uneven. James shifts his head to the side, towards the fields of corn swaying gently in the wind, stretching towards the horizon, moonlight painting them silver and grey. This far inland, he is the only man to have ever been troubled by the sea. He is glad that his mind is still capable of such quiet dreams.

“It is,” Silver says, answering both his question and his thoughts. His voice is soft but clear. “It has to be.”

“What will you do, then?” James asks, glancing back at the stars, different somehow to the ones that used to guide him home. Perhaps there is no home for them to guide him to, now. “Where will you go?”

“Back,” Silver replies simply.

James hums. “To Madi,” he summarizes.

A pause. “Yes,” Silver says at length. “If she forgives me.”

“She can’t forgive you,” James says. “It’s not her place to forgive you.”

“Is it yours, then?” Silver snaps, shuffling around until James can feel his gaze on the side of his face. He doesn’t look away from the stars.

“Even less so,” he replies.

“Is it unforgivable, then?” Silver says, angry and unavoidable now, like a storm racing towards the shore. “To protect the people I love?”

_The people I love_ , James thinks, and for a moment he lets himself wonder about impossible things. Then he pushes the thought away. “You’ve made your choice,” he says. “The only thing that matters is whether or not you can live with it.”

He can almost feel the moment the fight goes out of Silver, the clouds dissipating on the horizon, the ocean smoothing out. He is quiet now, like a misty morning after a rainy night, and James glances over to him, even though he can barely make out his silhouette in the darkness.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, “it often doesn’t matter what we can and cannot forgive. Only what we can and cannot live without.”

It’s a long time before Silver says, quiet and far less surprised than James has expected him to be, “I will miss you.”

“Yes,” James says, looking at the sky again. “You will.”

 

*

 

The water no longer bites at his hands as old wounds have long healed. These days his knuckles rarely get bloody, even though the familiar anger still simmers in his veins, tempting him to lash out. His palms no longer carry the blisters left by coarse ropes and unpolished timber. They are gentle now. Kinder.

He has grown used to this life, a life with firm ground beneath his feet, with the blue of the ocean replaced by the gold of the fields. He has grown used to _being_. These days there is no direct purpose to his life, no final goal in his mind. Life simply goes on, no longer expecting him to struggle through every minute and to gasp for every breath. Mornings are for warm sunlight and a warmer touch pulling him towards the waking world. Days are for honest work and soothing wind which dries the sweat off his back. Evenings are for golden tea and golden sunsets, for familiar hands and familiar lips, for halted breaths and tender words.

Nights are for quiet dreams.

It’s a good life, an honest life, a life he is still trying to deserve.

But England has followed him here. He can taste it in his tea, always a little bitter in the back of his throat. He sees it in the familiar shapes on the horizon and the familiar uniforms in the streets, in the shapeless and boundless army that never quite stops breathing down his neck as it belongs to an empire on which the sun never sets. He sees it in the people taught from birth to keep their heads down and to keep their voices low. He sees it in the laws that govern the land he now calls his home. He hears it in every unkind whisper and in every cruel judgment, in every sentence carried out and in every howl of joy that inevitably follows.

He feels it like a constant ache deep in his bones, like a disease running through his veins, like a sickness clogging his lungs.

There is no unseeing the injustice. There is no unlearning the truth.

There is no going back.

He is a warrior without a war. He cannot fight England any more than he can fight the sun itself. He no longer has his legend as an armor, no longer has his name as a shield, no longer has a crew as an army.

Once again England is an idea rather than an enemy, and ideas do not bleed.

He wonders what Miranda would have said if she could see him now, holding ocean water in the palm of his hand and waiting for old scars to burn again. He thinks of the way she tucked away her anger, staying calm so that he didn’t have to, pulling him back over and over again, matching his boundless sorrow with her steadfast strength. He thinks of the way she fell apart, broken pieces sharp enough to cut, of the way her grief fueled his rage and burned cities in its wake. He wonders why he never put a weapon in her hand, why she never asked for one, why they haven’t fought the war together rather than apart.

If Thomas’ memory kept him from looking forward, Miranda’s strength kept him from looking back.

These days James only ever looks back.

 

*

 

“And if I tell you I’ll miss you as well?”

The words sound different in the bright morning light, less like a tale and more like a truth. They are heavy like gravel, nearly too heavy to force them out, but James has learned by now that the words you don’t say only ever grow heavier as they rot in your heart. Some of these words, those that have nowhere to go and no one to hear them, will never stop weighing him down.

The answer will not change anything. It cannot change anything, not at this point, not when the war is over, not when the story is done. There is no going back from this. This is all they’ll ever be now.

An ending in motion.

“You won’t,” Silver replies, as if the decision is his to make and the story his to write. He takes another gulp of the water and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, watching as the men pack their camp and load the cart. He already looks a thousand miles away, untouchable and distant, just a part of a story James will never share.

Silver stands up. Just to be contrary, James remains seated by the cooling fire, looking up at the sky, not a single cloud in sight. _The doldrums_.

“Won’t tell you or won’t miss you?” he asks, tasting the salt on his tongue, the memory of thirst fresh in his mind. He can almost smell the blood drying in the sun.

“Neither,” Silver decides. “Both.”

 

*

 

He picks up one of the larger shells and traces its edges with his fingertips. He will not bring it home. By now he has learned that it’s not the ocean he can hear but the rush of his own damn blood.

The shell is warm in his hand, its edges smoothed out by the water and the sand.

It unnerves him that even now he remembers how much gold he could get for a shell this perfect from the old jeweler in Padstow. It unnerves him that after all those years in the Royal Navy and all those years in the West Indies, he still can’t quite forget the ocean of his youth, the northern wind so much more chilling without his mother’s smile to keep him warm, the shells littering the shore all blemished or broken, paying no mind to young boys and the fresh grief howling in their hearts, to young boys who no longer had the time to listen to the ocean and dream of impossible things.

The ocean has never been a weapon in his hand. It’s a vicious creature, hungry for flesh and blood, its storms a battlefield and its depths a graveyard. It’s an abyss, ever-empty, claiming bodies and ships alike, never quite satisfied. It has no allies and no conquerors, no owner and no king.

James has loved it and he has hated it, has allowed it to drown him and has tried to walk away, and yet the pull has never lessened or changed. The ocean is humming in his veins, roaring in his ears, biting at his tongue. The ocean is reflected in the sky, the clouds above him stretching like headsails hoisted up on their masts.

_Do you miss it?_ Thomas asks sometimes, in the quiet hours before the dawn, his fingertips tracing complicated patterns into James’ skin, over the wrinkles and around the scars, and James doesn’t lie when he says, _No_.

It’s impossible to miss the ocean when he can hear its echo in Thomas’ ribcage. It’s impossible to miss the ocean when he can smell it on his skin, in his sweat, when he can taste it in his mouth, in every touch of salt against his tongue. The ocean pulls him towards the shore every morning, but the ocean is also trapped in the hollow of his chest, in the quiet of their house, in the loneliness of his mind.

It follows him like a shadow, like a glimmer of light in his peripheral vision, and it’s a steadfast companion. He is both always and never alone, even when Thomas sleeps and he does not, even when they both pause in their conversation waiting for the familiar voice to fill in the silence that remains void.

He tells Thomas about it, sometimes. He talks about the quiet nights filled with nothing but the whisper of the waves and the hum of the winds. He talks about the sails stretching against the wind, about his ship skittering across the water, sliding through the ocean like a cloud across the sky. He talks about the moments between one breath and another, between one heartbeat and the next, when the world felt a little less heavy, when the grief lessened its hold on his throat and the rage fizzled out in his lungs. He talks about the times, scarce as they were, when he was at peace.

And Thomas listens. He listens in the bright light of the morning, on the porch of their house, when the air smells of oranges and when the grass is moist with pearls of dew. He listens in the fierce heat of the sun, in the gardens surrounding their home, when the air tastes of apples and when the sky is baby blue. He listens in the warmth of the night, when the air is heavy with contentment and the fire is dying down on the hearth.

This, James knows, is love — not the passion and not the desire, not the press of skin against skin, but the patient silence and the patient gaze, the brush of chapped lips against his forehead and the touch of warm fingers sliding between his own.

It’s enough for the storm in his heart to quiet down.

 

*

 

“They won’t remember any of this,” James says, one last time. “Not the purpose, not the ideals. Maybe not even the war. Just the monsters. Just their own hatred. Just their own story.”

“Yes,” Silver agrees. “I know.”

Silver is a puzzle without a solution. He is a man without a past, woven from stories and lies, a whisper turned into a legend turned into a myth. Years and decades and centuries from now, he will be no more a ghost than he is now.

Except — there have been truths tucked between the lies, shiny and cutting like specks of gold in golden sands. Except — there is a past, a past they both share, a past filled with a war of their own creation, a past full of heady victories and bright battles, of quiet evenings and stolen moments of peace. Except — ghosts don’t have such warm hands.

“Here is the gold,” Silver says. “It should be enough to buy his freedom several times over. As long as you never use your name again and as long as you don’t return to England, you should be safe.”

“What will you tell her?” James asks. “What will you tell all of them?”

“I’ll tell her the truth,” Silver says. “Them, I’ll tell a story they can believe.”

 

*

 

He can feel the resistance in his muscles and in his bones as he straightens, stepping back from the water.

It’s odd to know that after all this time, it will be his own body that will kill him, either through sickness or through old age. It won’t be a bullet piercing through his heart, or a blade cutting through his skin, or a rope tightening around his neck. It won’t even be the ocean, pouring down his throat and filling up his lungs, pulling him down, down, down.

Death used to be his companion just as the ocean is, but lately it’s quiet, no longer circling him like a predator hunting its prey. Instead, it nests in his mind and reminds him of the blood the ocean had washed off his hands and of the guilt it had left behind.

Thomas never asks why he wakes in the middle of the night, why he pushes the covers away and leaves the comfort of the bed, why he doesn’t light the candles as he wanders to the kitchen and why he makes a cup of tea and then lets it go cold without touching it once.

He never asks, but he follows, taking a seat at the table and letting his own tea go cold as well. He never asks, but he talks, his quiet words lulling the voices in James’ head back to their uneasy sleep.

He doesn’t talk about his father and he doesn’t talk about the plantation. He does, however, talk about Miranda. He talks about the formal gatherings she despised and the dusty libraries she treasured, he talks about the way she would huff to herself while reading newspapers and the way she would roll her eyes at Thomas’ colleagues without ever bothering to wait for them to turn away. He talks about the way she would always make him tea when he was upset, too strong and too sweet, and about the way they would read together before bed, with their backs propped against the headboard, shoulder to shoulder, content and warm.

_She loved you very much_ , James says once, just in case she would have wanted him to say so, just in case she never said it herself. When Thomas smiles contently and says, _I loved her very much as well,_ James has to look away, not because of grief and never because of jealousy, but because the same was true for him and her. And yet —

_She knew_ , Thomas says, hearing the thoughts James doesn’t allow himself to think. _James, of course she knew._

He tries to believe it, tries to picture the knowledge reflected back to him in her warm eyes, but it never quite works. She had followed him across the ocean and down into hell. She had asked him to walk away from a battle and he had declared a war. She had asked to be his partner and he had never even put a weapon in her hand. She had known him and he had known her and yet he had never said —

_She knew_ , Thomas repeats, and then his fingers are sliding into James’ hair, sifting through it the way Miranda’s once would, and James can once again swallow around the lump in his throat, can once again breathe through the grief filling his lungs like ocean water.

_She knew_ , Thomas repeats, and then his lips are brushing against James’ temple and against the nonexistent laughter lines around his eyes and he stands up, wrapping his arms around James, and he is warm, warm enough to chase away the memory of pale skin and dried blood, warm enough that James’ weary heart remembers to beat again.

_She knew_ , Thomas repeats, and then his gaze finds James’ eyes.

_I love you_ , James thinks, and in a way, he means, _you both_.

_I know_ , Thomas replies, and in a way, it means, _we’ve always known._

 

*

 

“I imagine I won’t be seeing you again,” James says. The ground is steady beneath his feet and the air smells of sunlight, dust, and corn. He can barely hear the ocean here, but he can still hear the rush of his own blood, and that will always be close enough.

“I imagine you won’t,” Silver agrees, calm like the ocean watched from a distance. His eyes are trained on the horizon, but the second James looks away from him, he can feel his gaze on his skin.

“Goodbye, Flint,” Silver says, a corner of his lips lifting up in a facsimile of a smile. He pauses. “I wish…”

“You wish what?” James asks, looking up as the silence grows heavy.

“Nothing,” Silver says, dismissing his own words like the wind brushes away specks of dust. He gestures towards the gates. “Go on.”

“You wish _what_?” James asks again, willing him to say whatever there is to say, to force the words out and shrug their weight off.

Silver barely spares him a glance, but his fingers tighten on his crutch. “Many things,” he says. “You should go, Captain.”

“Fine,” James says, tired of the battle he seems to have lost a long time ago, without ever noticing his own defeat. He turns around, towards the gates and towards the rest of his life, but Silver’s voice once again stops him in his tracks.

“Has it all truly been for nothing?” he asks, still studying the empty line of the horizon, still gripping his crutch tight enough for his knuckles to go white. For a moment, he looks less like a legend and more like a man. Still, he doesn’t say, _will we have been for nothing?_

James looks at him — at the man he both knows and doesn’t know at all — and one last time threads his fingers through the golden sands, trying not to cut his hands neither on the truths, nor on the lies.

“I believe,” he says carefully, wondering where Silver stores his gentleness, if it even exists at all, “that this part of the story is yours to tell.”

“I suppose it is,” Silver concedes. Just like that, one set of the strings is cut. Just like that, their story is done.

James wants to ask him if it ever gets tiring — the constant reinvention of one’s self, the rewriting of one’s story, the reshaping of one’s soul — but he knows that if he were to search for truths now, he would only find sand.

 

*

 

The walk back is both the easiest and the hardest part.

It takes looking away from the ocean and from the pull of impossible things. Out there, there was a purpose and there was a war, there was discovery and there was freedom. There were battles and there was blood, but there was a thrill as well, a heady rush of cheating death one more time.

Here, he is nothing but a man — his hair turning grey, his muscles turning soft, his reflection turning unfamiliar. Here, his knees protest as he begins the trek up the shore, old scars and older wounds biting into flesh once again, reminding him that he will die here, not today and not tomorrow, but one day for sure. Here, he is a captain without a ship and a ship without a purpose, lost and adrift.

Except —

Except there was a darkness out there, a darkness nothing could ever illuminate, a darkness filled with sadness and grief and rage. There was loss, heavy with words never said, heavy with lives unlived and peace not found. There was pain, festering in wounds that healed wrong, reignited over and over again with every touch of water and salt. For every moment of silence, there were nights filled with horrors, and for every friendship, there was a betrayal. There was only a legend and an empire made of sand, forever crumbling in his hands.

Except —

There is peace, here. So much peace that it’s unsettling — quiet mornings painted gold, long days underneath blue skies, warm evenings stretching for hours and hours as the sun travels towards the horizon. There is time for him to close his eyes, time to listen to the rush of blood in his veins.

The grief is calmer now, settled to sleep in his heart. It’s easier to think about the past without resenting it, to remember it without choking on regret. It’s easier to mourn the people they all could have been, had they lived in kinder times. It’s easier to believe that kinder times are yet to come.

He walks back, up the golden shore and through the silent fields, by the orange trees and up the pebbled road, and as the pull of the ocean lessens, the pull of home only grows stronger.

Thomas is waiting for him on the porch, as he always does, cutting apples in quarters and warming his feet in the sunlight. There are two cups sitting by his side, both made of the Meissen porcelain Miranda loved best. The air smells of strong tea and golden fields, of peaceful days and quiet dreams.

“Good morning,” Thomas says, setting down the knife and handing James a quarter of the apple. He doesn’t ask about the ocean, just as he never asks about Silver or about the war, or even about the shells James keeps bringing home every day, even though he clearly remembers planning to leave them behind.

He simply accepts the shell and brushes away the grains of sand.

“Good morning,” James replies, looking at the man he knows better than he knows himself, both when it comes to the lines of his face and to the fabric of his soul.

He takes a bite of the apple and a sip of the tea. The sugary sweetness of them both fills his mouth, easing the ache in his bones, and for a moment, he forgets all about wars and legends and scars. For a moment, there is nothing except for the rustle of the leaves in the wind, nothing except for the familiar beating of a familiar heart, nothing except for the creak of the steps as he sits down next to Thomas and stretches out his legs.

The ocean roars one last time behind the hills and inside his heart, and then the fire fizzles out.

James closes his eyes and tilts his face towards the rising sun.

He can no longer taste the salt in his mouth.

 

_fin_.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! ♥ please let me know if i messed something up (as english is not my first language and all that). 


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